Monday, November 12, 2012

Social Media Monday—Are You Social-Media Awkward or Social-Media Savvy?

The world of social media has its own ruleswhen it comes to interaction.

The social media universe
has developed into a world with it’s own ways of interacting. Stumbling around
this brave new world is exciting, but it can also lead to some embarrassing
moments. Today I’ll share some tips to help you acclimate to this new online
society.

Facebook

When to LIKE , COMMENT or SHARE on Facebook: When you read a post on Facebook you have three
options if you want to interact.

The First is to LIKE the post. When you click
on LIKE, Facebook will register your user name and the fact you liked it. This
carries more weight with the Facebook Edgerank Algorithm than just viewing the
post, but not as much as commenting.

The second option is to
COMMENT. This carries the most weight with Facebook and will give you the most
engagement with others seeing the post. BUT, and this is an important
consideration, it will also include you in all subsequent conversations. This
means that if you get email notifications on Facebook, everytime someone else
comments on this post, you’ll get an email about it. If it’s a popular post,
that can mean twenty or more emails in your inbox. So think carefully before
you comment.

NOTE: You can opt out of a
conversation (what Facebook calls post interaction). But if you choose to do
that, everyone in the conversation will be notified that you opted out.

The final option is to SHARE
a post on Facebook. This takes a copy of the post and pastes it on your page.
When Facebook pastes the post, it gives you the option of deleting the name of
the person you got the post from. Doing so is bad form. Not quite as bad as
plagiarism, but it is in the neighborhood.

So LIKE a post, when you
want to let people know you agree or enjoyed it.

COMMENT if you don’t mind
becoming part of the ongoing conversation.

SHARE a post, always giving
credit to the original poster.

When to FILTER a post or just UNFRIEND the person:

Don't be unnecessarily rude

FILTERING or HIDING a post or user can keep that
person’s updates from showing up on your timeline. This is a good option if you
don’t want to offend someone.

UNFRIENDING someone
basically says you don’t want to have any interaction with that person.
Depending on how many friends you have, this may be noticeable, especially if
you interact regularly at work or socially.

So FILTER someone who’s
annoying.

UNFRIEND someone you don’t
mind alienating.

Twitter

When to RETWEET and when to REPLY:There are two ways to answer someone on Twitter,
RETWEET and RELY. And there are specific times to use each one.

A RETWEET, is a repeat of
the tweet sent. This is used when you want to share a tweet with your
followers. For instance, if I saw a tweet about how to avoid getting
embarrassed on Twitter, I’d retweet it to my followers so they could learn too.
I also use it to share good news about others.

A REPLY, is an answer to a
tweet that’s been sent. This is used if someone asks you a question on Twitter.
It’s also used when someone else mentions you on Twitter. It’s a way of saying
thank you. It’s considered a very bad
instance of bragging to retweet a mention of yourself. For instance if someone
tweeted about this post, I’d REPLY and say thank you.

So RETWEET if you see an
update you want to pass on to your followers.

REPLY when someone mentions
you or asks a question.

Social Media in General

Avoid being labeled a hog.

When is it acceptable to HOG
THE STREAM? The short answer is …NEVER! Hogging or Spamming the stream, means
posting several social media updates in a row. This can be on Twitter,
Facebook, Google+, etc. You can do this inadvertently by engaging the AUTOMATIC
updates available on some ancillary programs like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite or
Buffer.

This option of automatic
updates claims to identify when the largest amount of your followers are
engaging on social media and update at that time. Unfortunately this can often
result in multiple updates sent one right after another. This can leave you
labeled as an irritation or even banned from certain networks. I recommend you
avoid any automatic scheduling options to avoid this.

So schedule the times when
you send out your social media updates and don’t post them one after another.
Spread them out.

First, so you don’t irritate
anyone by Hogging the Stream.

Second, so you reach people
who are on at different times of the day.

These are just a few of the
worst blunders for social media. I’d like to know what social media faux pas
you’ve seen and which ones irritate you the most.

Marjorie, none of this stuff comes naturally to any of us! Thanks for stopping by and feel free to contact me with any questions you ever have. Or if you have any ideas for blog posts you'd like to see. Blessings, E

Wow, this is helpful. Since I go on once a day and post several things sometimes on FB...this post makes sense about hogging the stream. Need to play around with Hootsuite to avoid having to go on more than once a day.

Julia, I'm hooked on Hootsuite. It's taken away a lot of stress because I can schedule the main stuff in the morning and fit other things in as I become aware of them. You'll LOVE the scheduling features on Hootsuite. Thanks for stopping by, Blessings, E

Edie, you are SO HELPFUL and I appreciate your understanding that some of us are still beginners at this. I recently started a simple blog (in WordPress) and I thought I had configured it to automatically update my Facebook page with what I post...but I don't see the posts showing up on my wall, so I have just been posting them manually. I hope this doesn't mean that I'm doubling updates? I'm just learning WordPress and find their "help" section to be not all that helpful on some questions. (Maybe you should be writing the help section for some of these websites!)

This blog is nice and amazing. I really like your post! It's also nice to see someone who does a lot of research and has a great knack for writing, which is pretty rare from bloggers these days. Thanks!